Dying of the Light

him wordlessly, then turned and left, returning shortly. He had strapped on his mesh-steel belt with its heavy holster and was buttoning up the front of a faded black shirt when he re-entered.

'Where are you going?' Dirk asked.

'Out,' Janacek replied with a brief grin. He undid the latch flap of his holster and drew out the laser pistol within, checked the power reading on the side of its butt, then reholstered and drew again-a smooth flowing motion with his right hand-and sighted down on Dirk. 'Do I alarm you?' he asked.

'Yes,' Dirk said. He moved away from the mantel.

Janacek's grin came back again. He slid the laser into its holster. 'I am quite good with a dueling laser,' he said, 'though in truth my teyn is better.

Of course, I must use only my right arm. The left still pains me. The scar tissue pulls, so the chest muscles on that side cannot move so far or so easily as those on my right. Yet it matters little. I am chiefly right-handed. The right arm is always more than the left, you know.' His right hand rested on the laser pistol as he spoke, and the glowstones in their black iron setting shone like dim red eyes along his forearm.

'Too bad about your injury.'

'I made a mistake, t'Larien. I was too young, perhaps, but my mistake was none the less serious for my age. Such mistakes can be very grave matters, and in some ways I escaped easily.' He was staring very fixedly at Dirk. 'One should be careful that one does not make mistakes.'

'Oh?' Dirk affected an innocent smile.

For a time Janacek did not reply. Then, finally, he said, 'I think you know what I am speaking about.'

'Do I?'

'Yes. You are not an unintelligent man, t'Larien. Nor am I. Your childish ruses do not amuse me. You have nothing to discuss with me, for example. You simply wanted to gain admittance to this chamber for some reasons of your own.'

Dirk's smile vanished. He nodded. 'All right. A lousy trick, clearly, since you saw right through it. I wanted to look for Gwen.'

'I told you that she was out in the wild, at work.'

'I don't believe you,' Dirk said. 'She would have said something to me yesterday. You're keeping me from her. Why? What's going on?'

'Nothing that need concern you,' said Janacek. 'Understand me, t'Larien, if you will. Perhaps to you, as to Arkin Ruark, I seem an evil man. You may think that of me. I care very little. I am not an evil man. That is why I warn you against mistakes. That is why I admitted you, though I know full well that you have nothing to say to me. For I have things to say to you.'

Dirk leaned against the back of the couch and nodded. 'All right, Janacek. Go ahead.'

Janacek frowned. 'Your problem, t'Larien, is that you know little and understand less of Jaan and myself and our world.'

'I know more than you think.'

'Do you? You have read Jaan's writings on the Demonsong, and no doubt people have told you things. Yet what is that? You are no Kavalar. You do not understand Kavalars, I would guess, yet you stand here and I see judgment in your eyes. By what right? Who are you to judge us? You scarcely know us. I will give you an instance. Just a second ago you called me Janacek.'

'That's your name, isn't it?'

'That is part of my name, the last part, the least and smallest part of who I am. It is my chosen-name, the name of an ancient hero of the Ironjade Gathering who lived a long and fruitful life, many times honorably defending his holdfast and his kethi in highwar. I know why you use it, of course. On your world and in your naming system it is customary to address those toward whom you feel distance or hostility by the final component of their names-an intimate you would call by his first name, would you not?'

Dirk nodded. 'More or less. It's not quite that simple, but you're close enough.'

Janacek smiled thinly; the blue eyes seemed to sparkle. 'You see, I do understand your people, only too well. I give you the benefit of your own ways-I call you t'Larien because I am hostile to you, and that is correct. You do not reciprocate, however. You address me as Janacek, without an instant of thought or concern, quite deliberately imposing your own naming system on me.'

'What should I call you then? Garse?'

Janacek made a sharp, impatient gesture. 'Garse is my true name, but it is not proper from you. In Kavalar custom, use of that name alone would indicate a relationship that does not in fact exist between us.

Garse is a name for my teyn and my cro-betheyn and my kethi, not for an offworlder. Properly you should call me Garse Ironjade, and my teyn Jaantony high-Ironjade. Those are traditional and correct from an equal, a Kavalar of another house with whom I am on speaking terms. I give you the benefit of many doubts.' He smiled. 'Now understand, t'Larien, that I tell you this as illustration only. I care precious little whether you call me Garse or Garse Ironjade or Mister Janacek. Call me whatever makes your heart happiest, and I will take no insult. The Kimdissi Arkin Ruark has even been known to call me Garsey, yet I have resisted the urge to prick him and see if he pops.

'These matters of courtesy and address– I do not need Jaan to tell me that they are old things, legacies of days both more elaborate and more primitive, dying in this modern time. Today Kavalars sail ships from star to star, talk and trade with creatures we would once have exterminated as demons, even shape planets as we have shaped Worlorn. Old Kavalar, the language of the holdfasts for thousands of your standard years, is scarcely spoken anymore, though a few terms linger on and will continue to linger, since they name realities that can be named only clumsily or not at all in the tongues of the star travelers-realities that would soon vanish if we gave up their names, the Old Kavalar terms. Everything has changed, even we of High Kavalaan, and Jaan says that we must change still more if we are to fulfill our destiny in the histories of man. Thus the old rules of names and namebonds break down, and even highbonds grow lax in their speech, and Jaantony high-Ironjade goes about calling himself Jaan Vikary.'

'If it doesn't matter,' Dirk said, 'then what's your point?'

'The point was illustration, t'Larien, a simple and elegant illustration of how much of your own culture you wrongly presume to be part of ours, of how you press your judgments and your values on us with every word and action. That was the point. There are more important matters in question, but the pattern is the same; you make the same mistake, a mistake you ought not make. The price might be greater than you can afford. Do you think I do not know what you are trying to do?'

'What am I trying to do?'

Janacek smiled again, his eyes small and hard, tiny wrinkles creasing the skin at their corners. 'You try to take Gwen Delvano away from my teyn. Truth?' Dirk said nothing.

'It is truth,' Janacek said. 'And it is wrong. Understand that it will never be permitted. I will not permit it. I am bonded by iron-and-fire to Jaantony high-Ironjade, and I do not forget that. We are teyn-and-teyn, we two. No bond that you have ever known is as strong.'

Dirk found himself thinking of Gwen and of a deep red teardrop full of memories and promises. He thought it a pity that he could not give the whisper-jewel to Janacek to hold for a moment, so the arrogant Kavalar could taste just how strong a bond Dirk had had with his Jenny. But such a gesture would be useless. Janacek's mind would have no resonances with the patterns esper-etched in the stone; it would be only a gem to him. 'I loved Gwen,' he said sharply. 'I doubt that any bond of yours is more than that.'

'Do you? Well, you are no Kavalar, no more than Gwen is, you do not understand the iron-and-fire. I first encountered Jaantony when each of us was quite young. I was even younger than he, in truth. He was fond of play with children younger than himself rather than his agemates, and he came frequently to our creche. I held him in great esteem from the first, as only a boy can, because he was older than me and thus closer to being a highbond, and because he led me on adventures into strange corridors and caves, and because he told fascinating stories. When I was older, I learned why he came among the younger children so often, and I was shocked and shamed. He was afraid of those as old as he, because they taunted him and often beat him. Yet by the time I learned that, a bond existed between us. You might call it friendship, but you would be wrong to do so; you would be imposing your own concepts on our lives once more. It was more than your offworlder friendship, there was iron between us